“Do you fancy Mr. Marston will accept that explanation?”
“Mr. Steele—” the derelict drew back his thin shoulders, and faced the other with a glint in the pale pupils that was an echo of the days when he had been able to look men in the face. “Before I became a scoundrel, sir, I was a gentleman. My daughter is extremely ill. I must remain with her, and take the chance as to what Mr. Marston may choose to do. I shall hope that he will make some allowance for a father’s desperate—if unscrupulous—effort to care for his daughter. I hope so particularly inasmuch as that daughter is also his wife.”
Steele started forward, his eyes going involuntarily to the girl, but she sat unflinching, except that a sudden, spasm of pain crossed the hopelessness of her eyes. Somewhere among Duska Filson’s ancestors, there had been a stoic. Instantly, Steele realized that it was he himself who had brought about the needless cruelty of that reminder. St. John had disarmed him, and put him in the wrong.
“I beg your pardon, sir,” he said.
“I came here,” said St. John slowly, “not only to notify you about your canvases. There was something else. You were both very considerate when I was here before. It is strange that a man who will do dishonest things still clings to the wish that his occasional honest motives shall not be misconstrued. I don’t want you to think that I intentionally lied to you then. I told you Frederick Marston was dead. I believed it. Before I began this—this piracy, I investigated, and satisfied myself on the point. Time corroborated me. It is as though he had arisen from the grave. That is all.”
The man paused; then, looking at the girl, he continued:
“And Mr. Saxon—” he hesitated a moment upon the name, but went resolutely on—“Mr. Saxon will recover. When he wakes next, the doctors believe, he will awake to everything. After his violent exertion and the shock of his partial realization, he became delirious. For several days perhaps, he must have absolute quiet, but he will take up a life in which there are no empty spaces.”
The girl rose, and, as she spoke, there was a momentary break in her voice that led Steele to hope for the relief of tears, but her tone steadied itself, and her eyes remained dry.
“Mr. St. John,” she said slowly, “may I go and see—your daughter?”
For a moment, the Englishman looked at her quietly, then tears flooded his eyes. He thought of the message of the portrait, and, with no information except that of his own observing eyes, he read a part at least of the situation.